Family Poetry

This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. Adoption and Suicidality will speak to anyone with direct experience of adoption and suicide or suicidal ideation, plus anyone who wants to know how to better help adopted people (and others in the adoption constellation) who are struggling.

The breathtakingly beautiful story of one little girl and her five paper dolls. A string of paper dolls go on a fantastical adventure through the house and out into the garden. They soon escape the clutches of the toy dinosaur and the snapping jaws of the oven-glove crocodile, but then a very real pair of scissors threatens. A stunning, rhythmical story of childhood, memory and the power of imagination from the author of The Gruffalo.

A poetic portrait of faith, futility, and the joy of this mortal life. In this astoundingly unique audiobook, best-selling author N. D. Wilson reminds each of us that to truly live, we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past. Then, we must see the future. We stand in the now. God says create. Live. Choose. Shape the past. Etch your life in stone, and what you make will be forever.

You gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar. What can we imagine for ourselves? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own rules of the game to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives? The Playbook is intended to provide inspiration for kids ages 10 and up to help them succeed on and off the court.

Sixth grade is coming to an end, and so is life as Macy McMillan knows it. Soon, her mother will upend their perfect little family, adding a stepfather and six-year-old twin stepsisters. She sends Macy next door to help 86-year-old Iris Gillan, who is getting ready to move into an assisted-living facility. Iris can't pack a single box on her own, and, worse, she doesn't know sign language. Soon, through notes and books and cookies, a bond grows between them, and this friendship, odd and unexpected, may be just what Macy needs to face the changes in her life.

Dylan Thomas wrote "A Child's Christmas in Wales" in 1955, in which he recreated the atmosphere of Christmas Past as he remembered it. Each one of us will have similar memories of the glitter and the emotions of this time of innocence, plenty, fun, anticipation, and excitement.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls.

Award-winning author Lee Wardlaw’s books have been honored by such prestigious groups as the American Library Association and the Children’s Book Council. Using a Japanese form of short poetry that concentrates on human-like foibles, Won Ton follows a shelter cat as he gets a new home. When the cat, who considers himself a prince of his kind, is given the name Won Ton, he’s aghast. “How can I be soup?” he asks. But soup or not, Won Ton and his new owner soon find a way to live happily together.

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Gibran's best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history, and it has never been out of print. The prophet, Al Mustafa, has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition.

Drawing from his experience as a translator, Forrest Gander includes, in the first powerfully elegiac section, a version of a poem by the Spanish mystical poet St. John of the Cross. He continues with a long multilingual poem examining the syncretic geological and cultural history of the US border with Mexico. The poems of the third section - a moving transcription of Gander’s efforts to address his mother dying of Alzheimer’s - rise like hymns, transforming slowly from reverence to revelation.

Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama is growing up, but he still loves to play with all his toys! When Mama Llama says it's time to clean up, Llama responds like any child more interested in playing than cleaning...by ignoring her! But Mama has an imaginative response of her own. What if she never cleaned? What would happen then? Well, Llama Llama is going to find out! Here is a truly funny take on a childhood chore that all children will relate to and laugh at! And it is sure to be helpful to get kids cleaning up!

Performance poet Sabrina Benaim presents Depression & Other Magic Tricks, a collection of poems that explores themes of mental health, love, and family. It is a documentation of struggle and triumph, a celebration of daily life and of living.

One of the most important and unique voices in American letters, distinguished poet, novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller N. Scott Momaday was born into the Kiowa tribe and grew up on Indian reservations in the Southwest. The customs and traditions that influenced his upbringing - most notably the Native American oral tradition - are the centerpiece of his work.

Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging.

Kate Baer shot into the literary stratosphere with the publication of her debut poetry collection, What Kind of Woman, which became an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Kate’s second full-length book of traditional poetry, And Yet, dives deeper into the themes that are the hallmarks of her writing: motherhood, friendship, love, and loss. Taken together, these poems demonstrate the remarkable evolution of a writer working at the height of her craft, pushing herself and her poetry in a beautiful and impressive way.

When Reena; her little brother, Luke; and their parents first move to Maine, Reena doesn't know what to expect. She's ready for beaches, blueberries, and all the lobster she can eat. Instead her parents "volunteer" Reena and Luke to work for an eccentric neighbor named Mrs. Falala, who has a pig named Paulie, a cat named China, a snake named Edna - and that stubborn cow, Zora.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.

In the spirit of his New York Times best seller Love Poems for Married People and Love Poems for People with Children, as well as his wildly popular New Yorker pieces, Thurber Prize-winner John Kenney presents a hilarious new collection of poetry for anxious people.

From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.

Chronicled in four parts, shifting restlessly between the author's childhood memories, the sudden disappearance of his brother, and the inevitable loss of his ailing mother, Late to the Search Party explores what it means to be a family of one—to be orphaned, whether by fate or by circumstance. In language that is both grounded and ethereal, Dawson tallies the losses and looks at what remains: the frustration and anger, the bewilderment and sadness—and the affection and humor that makes itself felt in spite of everything.